Shooting At The Walls Of Heartache
by TheMollyBee
Summary: Sam waits to tell Ruth she didn't get the part. What a difference a few hours makes.
1. Chapter 1

He doesn't usually smoke lying down.

He'd learned that lesson the hard way, and the smell of burning moustache will haunt his nightmares forever. Tonight, however, he'll make an exception, for there is no way he's leaving this bed before she does. Not a chance. Once she leaves, she won't come back, he knows that. He must take every second offered by her soft snoring to memorise everything about her before she walks out of his life forever.

Fuck.

He should have told her before, he knows. A lie by omission is still a lie. He can practically hear the words she would yell at him, floating across time. If he had told her before, there would not be anything to be before of. He would never have her here, next to him, black dust from her mascara on his chest hair.

She was always going to leave once she found out, once he told her the part was going to someone else. This way he has something to remember her by.

…Yeah, no, it was still a dick move. He should have told her. Fuck.

Her face is pressed into his shoulder, her nose bent, her breath warm on his skin. Why is he wasting his free arm on smoking, when he could savour this, do something sappy and fucking perfect like run his fingers through her hair?

He stubs his cigarette out onto the dresser, missing the cereal bowl he'd been using as an interim ashtray for the last six years by an inch or two, ash falling onto the floor.

"Jesus Christ." He curses, quiet as he can, so around regular speaking volume for everyone else.

"'Morning." Ruth says, eyes still closed. She moves up and kisses his collarbone. He lets himself touch her hair, twisting it round his fingers.

"Mm, not yet. It's early." He says, not fully sure of the time but well aware that his piece of shit curtains couldn't block out the morning sun for love nor money.

"It's perfect." She says. He can't help but laugh.

"You cheeseball. Fuckin' actresses. Who do you think is writing this script?" He rubs his thumb at the edge of her mouth, like he's rubbing away her words as well as a little smeared lipgloss.

"Sam!" She protests, "I'm trying to keep our moment! Play along!"

He smiles, small and sad, his lower lip tensing up and hiding under his moustache. He can see the scene as she's viewing it in her mind. The end of the movie. Soft blue lights over them. The sheet pulled up around her for modesty. The guy gets the girl. Happily ever after. He can see the final credits, hear the theme as it rolls.

This is where you tell her, douchebag. Don't let it go any further. It's already gone too far.

"Hey, Ruthie?" He says.

He doesn't hear any more until the door slams.


	2. Chapter 2

She knew walking out of the audition that she didn't get the part.

Hell, she'd known walking in that she probably wouldn't get it. She had turned up mostly just to see Sam. And Justine, yes. But mostly Sam. And god, did being back in California agree with him. He looked younger. Healthier. Happier.

No, the problem wasn't that she wanted the part and didn't get it. Sure, she would love to work with Sam and Justine again, of course she would. And it wasn't that she wanted to spend time with Sam, although she really, really did.

What it came down to, really, was that she was 35 and exhausted. By now, she'd assumed she'd be turning down parts left right and centre. She should be being offered roles she wasn't right for, just on the basis that it was her. Ruth Wilder. If she had known as a kid fighting for bit parts in school productions that she wouldn't have her name in lights or inside a damn Playbill by now, she'd have quit before she even started. Become a school teacher. Married a Mark type. Had two kids she didn't really want because that was The Done Thing. Accepted that life without ever wondering what else was out there.

(No, she wouldn't. If you had told fourteen-year-old Ruth that, she'd stay awake three days learning monologue after monologue just to prove you wrong. There's a reason she's got the entirety of Much Ado About Nothing memorised)

It's as she's considering riding out the rest of GLOW and then taking up the vacancy in the theatre department at her dad's school he always used to suggest in her pre-GLOW days – he considered her a success now, and wasn't that a fun burden – that Sam runs out of the audition room after her.

Sam.

She'd been renegotiating her feelings for him in the months since he left without a goodbye. Russell was consistent. Sam was unpredictable. Russell was nice. Sam was generally the opposite. She liked Russell. The choice was obvious. Bury the feelings and they will disappear in time.

Except now Sam was in front of her again, and yeah, she liked Russell. She did. But god, she loved Sam.

She meets him for drinks, knowing she won't make it back for Sheila, and she spills out half her soul. Then they're climbing into a cab, they're back at his and they're together and it's all she ever wanted. She feels her brain put links together with an_ oh_. This is what happiness feels like. No, no, this is contentment, which is much better. Happiness is fleeting. This is forever.

She could happily spend the rest of her life here, pressed skin to skin with him.

Sometimes, however, she has these moments where she seems to exist outside her body. Or maybe too deep inside her body to get out and control things, like she's possessed by a demon with no purpose other than to mess up her plans. She felt this way before she slept with Mark. She felt this way running – well, hopping – away from Sam at the dance. And here it is again. The monster that ruins her life.

She can see him wrestling with wanting to tell her the bad news and she wants to tell him she knows, that it's fine. She'll get the next part, or maybe she won't. It's not the end of the world. She has him.

But instead he opens his mouth and her entire being protests. She's screaming at him, and she doesn't know half of what she says. She's storming out without her underwear. She's swearing to never see him again.

But knowing that that's not true.

Much, much later, when she tells him this part, he laughs so hard he spills his coffee down his shirt, and thunders off for a clean one. A laugh so full it stitches up the wounds littered in their past. But that's later.

No, her truth now is that she knew walking out his door, knew deep in her soul on some level he would call melodrama and she then would call karma, that she was pregnant.


	3. Chapter 3

As much as he misses GLOW, Sam can't help but be glad to be working on a movie again. They're barely a week in and already he feels unleashed. The TV show was interesting but churning out the episodes on a weekly basis meant he didn't have the time to fiddle, to experiment. Here, he can get real weird with it. Try out angles he knows he won't use. Get that dickhead lead actor kid to deliver the same line thirty times, because yeah, the eighth one had everything he needed, but the kid really is a dick. Justine is dating him.

The movie is his baby. His baby's baby, really, but he didn't know Justine as a baby, and if Rosalie hadn't mailed him some photos he'd swear she popped out with that punk haircut.

The movie is everything. It fills the Ruth-shaped hole in his life better than blow, better than booze, better he imagines than fucking the girl who got the teacher role in the end. He hasn't tried. She's offered.

Justine is back with Rosalie for Christmas, with an invitation extended to Sam that he knew better than to accept. They decide to do their own thing before she goes; food, at a diner, no gifts. Much more their style than a big family dinner, with the fucking turkey and all the stuff that goes with it.

He got her a gift.

She got him one too; a shirt that he jokes is too nice, too formal, but they both know he'll be wearing the first day back on set.

He'd had second, third, fourth thoughts over his gift. He leans into the practical aspect of it, but he knows she's not buying it. He's a soppy dude. He's so glad to have her now, have their micro family, with the bickering and the TV dinners. His life is viewed in Before and After Justine.

She lets him pretend it's just about inheritance. She doesn't think anything of his "might be sooner than we think" comment – he always thinks he's about to conk it. He'll tell her once the movie wraps, probably.

"Promise me you're gonna see actual humans over Christmas." She asks, handing back his pen. Her tone leaves little room for argument.

"That's a big request, kid. You're only gone four days. Why would I need to see anyone?" He says, his schedule already full with getting drunk in front of the TV with takeout.

"Because you're self-destructive, and Christmas is a lonely time."

"Ouch. Fine. Debbie has left a couple messages; I'll call her back." He says, blasé, but coloured a little intrigued – Debbie has called him probably twice ever, yet she's left messages the last two days. He's got nothing better to do than call her back tomorrow, he supposes.

"GLOW Debbie?" Justine asks, an eyebrow raised.

"Yeah. Do I know any other Debbies?" He replies.

"Debbie from the movie."

"Who?" He asks, his mind blanking.

"Debbie. She plays the teacher. Ruth's part?" Justine clarifies. He chokes on his water.

"Oh. Jesus, her name's Debbie? Fuck. The irony."

"Yeah." Justine agrees, "You heard from Ruth."

"Nope." He replies. It's the truth. Not a peep. He had expected a call where she stood silent on the other end, or her dramatic return the morning after. Alas, no Ruth.

"I can't believe she never showed up for your drinks." Justine says, shaking her head. Oh yeah, that's what his excuse was; that he'd sat and waited, and she had decided to head back to Vegas instead. "There must be more on, Sam. It's weird for her to go quiet. You should call her."

"Yeah… About that." He says.

"What did you do?" She replies, immediately defensive.

"Hey, why am I automatically to blame?" He escalates, his gestures large.

"Well, aren't you in the wrong here?" She replies.

"Maybe! But let me tell you before you decide that!" They laugh, realising they're the loudest in the room, "You're such a bad daughter."

"Too late, you've made it official now." She laughs, tapping the envelope. He mock-growls.

"God, I hate Christmas." He sighs, preparing to tell the story to his teenage daughter he should probably censor it for, "Also, is it weird you don't call me dad?"


	4. Chapter 4

Ruth feels so, so guilty about abandoning Sheila, of course she does. Less so when she finds out how well she did, the monster part of her brain screaming that it's not fair that Sheila has done so well without fighting for years to harness her talents. She hasn't earned it.

She's sick to her stomach thinking about the fire, and how she's lucky to have missed it because she was being a child, burning bridges for no good reason. Her friends could have all died, and she was, what? Sat in her car halfway back, crying her eyes out because she didn't get a part she never even wanted?

_("It's not the part" her rational brain says, "it's what it represents"_

"_Drive east and change your name" the monster replies.)_

She wonders how long it will take her to get used to Sheila as just that, without the she-wolf dynamic. She wonders if they'll still know each other by then. Will jealousy eat at this friendship too? Will she sleep with Sheila's wolf husband, when she gets one?

She asks Sheila how it felt, up there, on the stage, performing and living out both their dreams _("it's only been Sheila's dream for ten minutes" the monster says)._

"It's the best feeling I've ever had in my life." She replies, and _wow_. That cut deep, intentionally or not. Sheila has always been able to read her, sniff out her emotions with her wolfy senses. Can she smell her failure? Ruth feels horribly, wholly seen.

The best feeling in her life was turning to Sam and finally allowing herself to tell him she loved him. It was when he heard the words, really heard them, and she watched the tension just melt off him.

She'd had the best, and now she'd made it so very difficult to return to it. It was probably impossible. She couldn't break Sam's heart again – she wasn't sure either of them would allow that to happen.

Sheila, however, would probably have her own tv show in a month.

Carmen's idea to do A Christmas Carol in the ring is exactly the kind of distraction Ruth needed.

Sure, she might have thrown off the love of her life, but that means it's prime time to return to the real, first love of her life: theatre. Okay, the stage has pink ropes, and it's in Vegas, not Broadway or London, but a stage is a stage – all the world's a stage! Okay, the script leaves a lot to be desired, sure. They've taken enough liberties to have Charles Dickens spinning in his grave. But there is a script! She's playing a part! She's wearing someone else's skin for an hour, and thank god, because another hour in her own skin would have done her in.

But it doesn't work. All she can think about is Sam, and how he would roll his eyes at the British accents. She can hear his direction in her ears as she wrestles with Carmen, careful not to step in the light of her grave. He'd have loved that.

It's too much for her to reflect on past, present and future. She can sum it up pretty easily altogether: she messed up. Her future holds more mess, that's for certain.

As they sing White Christmas together, her thoughts wander. Does Sam have Justine for Christmas? Is he all alone? She almost misses the tearful reunion between Cherry and Keith – and she's still not sure what happened with them, but if they can make it work, does she still have time to fix things with Sam?

No, no. It's too late.

But then she's talking about her flight home for Christmas with Carmen, and hey, should she call her parents to cancel, and fly out to surprise Sam instead? No.

But then Tamme gets her secret Santa gift, and all Ruth can think about is Sam in the hot tub telling her he was in love with her. Why didn't she speak up then? Russell. Russell! He was meant to be meeting her at her parents' house for Christmas! He was coming back from Spain just to meet them!

Even if things were truly ruined between her and Sam, she couldn't keep stringing Russell along. But god, calling him to break up? At this time of year? Could she?

And things really were over between her and Sam. He shouldn't forgive her, even if he could, so maybe it would be wiser to stay with Russell. Convince him the baby she's sure is growing inside her is his, even though he'll do the math and know it isn't. Maybe he'll stay with her anyway – he probably would. He was such a good guy.

The new year would be the time for decisions – that's one decision she can make right now. She'll fly to Denver, then on to Omaha. See her parents. See her nice, consistent boyfriend. Forget about life for a while. Start over in 1987.

Debbie, of course, comes along to throw a wrench in those plans.

Ruth, a director? In her own right? Without Sam there? She wants it so much. She doesn't want it at all.

She would have agreed to this eden in a heartbeat if Bash had offered it. She can't accept anything from Debbie, probably never will be able to. It's not humility, nor is it ego. Okay, it might be a little ego. It wasn't ego until Debbie said she wouldn't make it as an actress. She knows. She knows it's unlikely. She knows most of the ships have sailed, and her harbour stands mostly empty. But why did Debbie have to point out the holes in her life raft?

As long as there was hope, however small, Ruth didn't have to think about the direction the rest of her life was going in.

She gets on the plane knowing that Debbie will wait for her to call and accept the offer. It's too good an opportunity to pass up.

Ruth doesn't call.


	5. Chapter 5

Ruth's parents love Russell.

Of course they do. He brought wine back from Spain for them, and listened intently when they spoke about their honeymoon to a completely different part of the country, did he know it? He nodded at the right parts. Asked questions. He spoke like a normal person, and all Ruth can think about is Sam's way of bulldozing his way through a conversation. How Sam would bring wine from Sicily, but then say he thinks all wine tastes the goddamn same and complain about having to pay more to impress her parents, even though he bought the wine by himself unprompted because he _wanted _to impress her parents.

Sam would raise an eyebrow at the separate bedrooms her parents lead them to, and then he'd sneak into her room the second the thought they might be asleep. He'd fuck her in the bed she grew up in, and he'd laugh and shush all the noises she made. He'd fall asleep next to her, and sulk when she kicked him out early the next morning.

But Sam isn't there.

Russell is asleep across the hall, conked out by 8:30pm due to a combination of jet lag and the amout of wine Ruth's dad puts in and then serves with his risotto. Ruth watches the hands on her clock tick past midnight before she sighs and goes over, knocking on the door to the guest room quietly but walking in without an answer. She watches him for a moment, watches the rise and fall of his chest as he snores lightly, and feels… very little.

This is her boyfriend; her boyfriend she hasn't seen in weeks because they live hours and more recently _oceans_ apart, and she hasn't even missed him. Sure, she's been busy, but she wasn't too busy to drive to LA and sleep with another guy, so she could have found some spare minutes to miss the guy she was intending to spend forever with.

"Hey, Russell?" she says, sitting on the side of the bed and shaking his shoulder.

"Hey!" He says, waking up with a sleepy smile that slips away when he meets her eyes. He scoots up onto his elbows.

"Can we talk?" She asks. She notices his hair looks no different when ruffled from sleep, whereas she can tell when, where, and how long Sam slept from the position of his hair.

"No, Ruth. There's no point." Russell says, lying back down.

"Russell, I need - "

"I need to not get dumped on – shit, ten minutes into Christmas day, Ruth! Wait until I've eaten the lunch your dad has spent the evening talking my ear off about, and then I'll go, but I'm not leaving yet." He says, voice raised enough that Ruth instinctively looks at the wall like she could see her parents wake through the brick.

"Russell, I'm not breaking up with you!" She whisper-hisses.

"Aren't you?" He asks, weary.

"NO!" She replies, part of her disagreeing.

"Well, what are you coming in here to talk about then?" He asks, his tone marginally improved.

"Why did you automatically think I was breaking up with you? I invited you to meet my parents?" She asks, offended. As half-hearted as her interest may be, she is still the one making the key steps in their relationship. She hasn't met his parents. She picked up the phone when his brother called, once, but that's hardly a stage in anyone's relationship. There aren't cards for that in between the 'happy anniversary' ones.

"Are you saying you didn't sleep with Sam then?" He says, pulling her from her thoughts and back into the room.

"WHAT?" She squawks. It's been two weeks; she can't still have swollen lips, can't still smell like his cologne-and-cigarettes musk.

"You wouldn't stop talking about your audition before you went to see him, and then I don't hear another peep from you until I called to say I landed. I wasn't even sure you'd pick me up. I half expected him to be on my flight."

"I… I did pick you up?" Ruth says, suddenly dead tired.

"I know, Ruth. But you slept with him, too." He says, not defeated but just neutral, and something in his voice untenses her shoulders.

"Yeah." She admits.

"Okay. Okay. I had kind of expected this. But fuck, Ruth! If you cheat on him, don't have him still come to meet your folks!"

"I'm not with him! I'm with you!" She insists, although she doesn't know why. She doesn't _not_ want Russell, but if he did leave it's not like she'd cry into a pint of ice cream.

"No, Ruth. I can't keep being your consolation prize."

"Russell, please –

"No, Ruth. We're done. I'll stay if you want me to, but just as a friend. I still like you, heck, I'll probably still be in love with you next Christmas, or the next ten, but I can't be the one you settle for. Now, go back and get some sleep, and we can play happy families with your parents through lunch." He rolls over, away from her, and she reluctantly accepts that the conversation is over.

She pads back to her room, careful over a particularly squeaky floorboard, and thanks a god she doesn't believe in for giving her a boyfriend who understands how important it is to her to present an image of normalcy to her parents.

An ex-boyfriend, technically.

She thinks about the Christmas to come, the one next year, and the one every year after. This would be the last one without her baby. Maybe next year she would be sat around the table with Sam and their little kid; her dad flourishing in his role as grandpa. Maybe they would be in LA instead. Maybe she would be bringing the baby to work with her at GLOW 2.

She had to make some calls.

But maybe not while she was still in her parents' house.


	6. Chapter 6

Russell leaves with a polite but flimsy excuse shortly after they finish eating, Ruth's plate sitting barely poked at. Her mother gives her a look that makes her wither as the door closes but her father, George, is unaware or just doesn't care.

Ruth heads back to Vegas before New Year. Despite Bash and Debbie hightailing it back to LA, they still have shows to run from New Years Day onwards, and Ruth can't think of a better place to see in 1987 than practicing in the ring.

She's the only one back when she returns to the hotel – the only one from the team, that is; downstairs the casino is heaving, and she expects very few empty seats for the first few shows. Her room is eerily quiet without Sheila, but she relishes being alone after just a few days with her parents. Something about being with them, particularly amongst all the Russell stuff, made her feel like a rebellious teenager again. It was exhausting.

She doesn't enjoy the quiet for long, however. The lack of people means lack of judgement, lack of explaining herself out of a lie with another lie if she gets caught, so she heads down to the gift shop – because Vegas – and buys herself a pregnancy test, ready to spend an hour staring at it like it could influence the outcome.

Does she want this baby? She's so sure it's real that she hasn't even considered the alternative. Why has she trusted her gut over science here?

She stares at the box in her hand, unwilling to decide a 'yes' or 'no' on the potential baby. She feels a presence next to her and turns, expecting Cherry maybe, or someone else eager to rehearse. She hopes for Carmen, wishing to God she changed her mind about going on the road with her brother.

It's neither of those people. It's none of the girls.

It's her mother.

"Now I'm starting to understand why that nice young man didn't stick around for your father's pie." She says, staring pointedly at the pregnancy test box.

"Mom. Hi. I can explain." Ruth says, moving to put the box down and deny everything, but changing her mind halfway so her arm stopped awkwardly. Her mother looked distraught,

"Can you? Can you explain it in a way that doesn't make you seem like a floozy who got herself into trouble with some Vegas _pimp?_" She whispered, scandalised.

"Can we talk about this upstairs?" Ruth pleaded, seeing her mom's tension rising and rising.

"I'm sure a place like this has this conversation in it ten times a day!"

"Mom, why are you even here?" Ruth asked. Her mother schooled her expressions and looked Ruth dead in the eyes.

"I wanted to see the career that was worth throwing away your relationship for. I wanted to see the reason I paid for your rent and acting classes, only for you to up sticks and become a showgirl."

"I'm not a showgirl, mom, I'm a wrestler." Ruth protested.

"As if that's better!" She scoffed.

"Mom, I'm going to buy this, and then I'll be going up to my room. You can come with me, or you can wait down here and we can go to talk later, or, best of all, you could go back to dad!"

The last time Ruth had taken a pregnancy test, she had imagined doing so again in a time that was right. There would be someone with her; the baby's father, and they would be anxiously hoping for a positive. Instead, she has her mother, sat on the very edge of her bed like the germs from the casino are about to climb up through the floor, while she is sat on the edge of the bath, checking her watch every time it feels like ten minutes has passed. Most of the time, it's barely been three.

Jean Wilder is not the last person Ruth would have wanted with her in this moment, but she's not ideal either. Her biting comments have quietened as Ruth expected, knowing her mother's anger comes in ten-minute bursts at most. They had never been close, but they weren't unfriendly. She loved her mother, and knew she was loved in return.

The silence of the past 45 minutes had given Ruth a lot of time to consider the events from her mother's point of view, and yeah, she would probably react the same. Maybe wouldn't call her daughter a 'floozy'. Hopes she wouldn't insult her daughter's career path. But ultimately, yeah, she'd be angry too. As far as Jean knows, the baby is anyone's. A mob boss'. A male stripper's. A seedy direc- no, no, that wasn't fair.

Should she tell her mother the truth? A parentally acceptable version, but the truth none the less? Up the star-crossed lovers aspect – her mother loved a good soap – but de-age Sam a few years?

"Ruth?" Jean called, "I do believe it's been an hour now."

Ruth scrunched her eyes tight.

"You have to look, Ruthie. It's not Schrodinger's cat. I can see the answer." Jean said, her tone horribly unclear. Ruth opened her eyes.

"Fuck."


End file.
